Wednesday, April 16, 1997

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the end of racist
segregation in major league baseball. On April 15, 1947, Jackie
Robinson took the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the
first African-American ball player in the big leagues.

A scathing internal report released yesterday on the FBI’s vaunted
crime lab criticized the lab and its leadership for flawed
reporting and inaccurate testimony, including in major cases like
the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings.

But the scandal at the FBI’s crime lab is just the latest in a
series of controversies to hit the $3 billion a year agency.

Back in 1990, a car carrying environmental activists Judi Bari and
Darryl Cherney was bombed in Oakland, California. Police and FBI
agents charged Cherney and the late Judi Bari with bombing
themselves, based in part on inaccurate testimony by the FBI crime
lab. Now, attorney’s are filing suit against the Oakland police and
the FBI.

One of the most prestigious — and wealthiest — environmental
prizes awarded every year to grassroots activists is the Goldman
Environmental Prize. This year, the seven winners from five
continents receive a "no strings attached" award of $75,000.

This years winners include a Russian naval officer accused of
treason for exposing radioactive contamination and a Somoan tribal
chief who stopped loggers from destroying ancestral rain forests.

Today we’re pleased to be joined by two of the winners. Terri
Swearingen, an Ohio nurse who played a key role in organizing
opposition to the nation’s largest toxic waste incinerator. And
Juan Pablo Orrego of the Group to Save the Bio Bio in Chile, one of
the world’s last major free-flowing rivers.

Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”